And they had to be accessible-a note that will live on my iPhone and my iPhone only is not a note that’s ultimately useful to me: I might take the notes on a mobile device, but I might write a paper or a story on a laptop or desktop- so I want quick, easy access to the notes in both locations. They had to help me get organized, easily and intuitively. I had three criteria for judging these note-taking apps: They had to be versatile. And to test them, I used each in my everyday life-for reporting and writing news stories, as well as everyday tasks like making grocery lists, or to store away a great thought or quote. To determine that, TechHive picked a number of note-taking apps, popular either with the public-as determined by the iOS and Android app store charts-or which have received sterling notices in the tech press.
All I need is my smartphone, and I’m ready to go to class, conduct an interview, or cover a fire as a breaking news story. For the first time in decades, I don’t have to carry pen and paper everywhere I go. The productivity charts in the app stores are awash in great note-taking apps, ranging from the complicated- Evernote would let you describe every part of your life with enough detail to satisfy three of the five senses-to the useful-but-relatively-one-dimensional (think of the naive Notes app on iOS). Mobile devices, though, transformed everything.
